


nothing more than love and space dust

by ProwlingThunder



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cassian Follows Orders, Cassian has feelings, Cassian-centric, Eadu Remix, Fix-It, Gen, Not A Fix-It, POV Cassian Andor, Rogue One Spoilers, Side A is Good, Side B is Suffering, Spoilers, Suffering, life is complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: Cassian pulls the trigger.





	1. The Cassette

**Author's Note:**

> * _nothing more than love and space dust_ comes from David Jones  
>  Shoutout to Badwolfgirl1 for the title.

Jedha City is gone; he doesn’t need to wait for the dust  _ (the city) _ to settle back to the ground to know there is a crater as big as the city,  _ bigger _ than the city, big enough to radically alter the magnetosphere. Cassian knows enough about it to know that Jedha City being gone means  _ Jedha _ is gone; the dust will never settle in their lifetimes,  _ humans don’t live that long. _

Chirrut murmurs prayers for the dead and Cassian’s ship is the last out (barely), there is nothing but  _ grief _ inside the hull, thick enough to strangle him, but Cassian has been doing this too long, he can’t  _ stop _ for a moment to join them--

He has the pilot. No message  _ (Jyn, do you have the message? _ A holo, and now it’s gone, so much dust like Saw and his rebels, that little girl Jyn risked her life and the mission both for, stolen kyber, all gone, a nuclear winter) and the pilot wasn’t worth much on his own, but Galen Erso’s daughter had stood there and listened to it,  _ maybe she was enough? _

He dares not call Draven until they’re well into dead space, (they got a meeting with Saw, which ended rather  _ spectacularly, _ and it was not in any way whatsoever what Draven had wanted him to do) but Jyn wants to rescue her father and it’s a  _ good idea, _ an excellent plan, squirrel the head engineer out of the Empire, look what good he could do in their hands, all the knowledge he had that would suddenly be theirs?  _ It was good,  _ but.

_ Your orders have not changed. _

He was a soldier and Draven was his CO and Cassian hated, sometimes, the things he did but he’d always  _ done _ them, he’d always done what he had to do, but..

_ Jyn… _

Jyn wanted to save him. (A part of Cassian wanted to save him too, the part of Cassian that was forever six years old and desperate for his parents to come home, the part of Cassian that had existed before the Rebellion and the part of Cassian he’d had to kill to become a part of it, because a six year old couldn’t pull the trigger of a blaster without bursting into tears, no matter how angry he was. Cassian couldn’t be that person in any way and live with himself, but  _ Cassian _ still wanted....)

At least they can get to Eadu.  _ He _ has the pilot. Doesn’t matter if Bodhi’s brains are scrambled; some things nothing can erase.

(Jyn spends the whole flight so hopeful it makes him sick with grief and guilt but  _ he can’t stop. _ Cassian has his orders.)

Kay crashes the ship. It’s the best excuse to spill out onto Eadu’s rocky surface that Cassian could have been handed, but it  _ hurts, _ the knowledge of what he’s going to do. Orders like this always hurt.

Maybe it hurts worse because it’s Jyn, or maybe it hurts worse because he has to do the same thing they did to him (one bullet from afar, what was one more orphan in the universe?) or, maybe, it hurts because he’s getting old and losing his edge?

(Maybe it was the child crying for her mother. Of all Cassian does for Draven, he never gets near the children. He  _ can’t.) _

He sends Bodhi away to find a ship for evac (“That’s Galen Erso,” Bodhi says, and it’s amazing he remembers that much with such clarity, when a few hours ago all that he got was  _ I’m the pilot, I brought the message and I’m the pilot.) _

Galen stands tall and proud beyond the green of his sniper rifle and pain  _ aches _ through every fiber of his being.

This man was Jyn’s father, a bright shining star in her life, the only parent she had left. He was a hero to the Rebellion if Jyn’s words were true (a fault, right into the reactor core, one good shot and  _ gone)  _ and he held so much that they could use, killing him would be such a  _ waste. _ Mon Mothma wanted him brought back,  _ rescued. _

...this man was an Imperial architect, who had designed and made the weapon that had erased Jedha City from the universe, that had all but killed everybody on the planet with one blow. Who knew what else he had designed-- who knew what else he  _ would _ design?

Jyn wanted to save him and Mothma wanted to use him and Draven wanted him dead--

The man beside him was Orson Krennic, an Imperial General, the man responsible for the deaths of so many (for the deaths of Cassian’s parents) and a much higher profile target, but he wasn’t Cassian’s mission. And yet.. Krennic’s death would deal a stronger blow to the Empire than Erso’s, he was only one head of the hydra but he was one with bite and poison, the arm that held the dagger, the blaster,  _ the one who gave the orders. _

Cassian stared at them both, thinking about Jyn (Jyn, desperate, fierce and bright and wild, everything Cassian wished he could be and everything he couldn’t because of who he was) and Draven (his CO, who had given him every order he’d ever taken but every one of them had needed to be done, who’d always watched him quiet but proud every time he came back not just alive but successful) and everything he had ever done that hollowed out his soul a little piece at a time.

Did he even have a choice? (No.)

He lined up his target, breathed in (steadying,) breathed out (he wasn’t Cassian anymore, he couldn’t be Cassian and do what he needed to do.)

Squeezed the trigger.

(Then he saw Jyn in the corner of his gaze, thought he saw her mouth  _ papa _ but by then it was too late, it didn’t matter anymore.)

He had never betrayed an order.


	2. Side A

There was a plume of blood (there always was) but Eadu was too stormy and too dark for it to be seen by itself, just the aftermath as it sprayed across Erso’s face. Krennic doesn’t fall immediately (it was the right call, Cassian knows, can feel it in his bones, and for once the right call feels  _ right) _ but he  _ does _ fall, collapsing into a heap before the engineers he’d had mowed down, and that movement heralds chaos.

All the Storm Troopers are trained, and trained well, and Cassian knows too that the way the body fell, they already know where he’s at, if not the precise rock he’s tucked behind. He breathes in, out (above him, fighter pilots light up the sky and drop bombs on the landing, but it doesn’t matter because Erso has lurched forward, both of them, one into danger and one out and (Cassian wants to stop)) and pulls the trigger again.

A trooper goes down. There’s no way he can lay enough cover fire to get both of them out alive (he doesn’t have a choice, he  _ made his choice) _ but damn him if he isn’t going to  _ try. _

It’s chaos and blaster fire (and kriffing hell, he’s a  _ spy, _ firefights are not his forte)  _ (Jyn is still down there) _ and Kay is in his ear, Bodhi has found a ship--

An Imperial fighter falls like a star, metal screaming through the sky, and the trajectory lands it on the anti-aircraft guns with a deafening explosion that lights everything like sunrise. (Where’s Jyn?)

The Ersos pelt as fast as they can, as much cover as they can, and  _ stars, _ she’s good with a blaster, so good (he’s glad he let her keep it) because some of the Troopers are not  _ nearly _ as dumb as they look and their shiny meal ticket is getting  _ away. _

Cassian reminds them where he is as long as he can (hurry Jyn,  _ hurry) _ and then he retreats because  _ Kay will not leave without Cassian. _

 

When they are finally on board, all of them, Cassian tells Bodhi where to go (“Get us off this rock before the rebel fighters stop drawing fire,”) and Jyn (bright as the stars) turns to him, relief in her stance and gratitude and Cassian has all of two seconds to brace himself before she throws her arms around him  _ (“Thank you, Cassian, thank you, thank you.”) _

Cassian meets Galen Erso’s eyes over the head of his daughter and there’s no illusions anywhere there that Cassian wasn’t here for his head instead.

He hugs her back and lets himself crack for just a moment. “Go catch up with your father, Jyn,” and the words are as soft as they’ll ever be, quiet, meant for her and her alone. She squeezes him tighter (a fervent  _ thank you _ on lips bright as dawn) and inside Cassian shatters as she lets him go.

“I’ll be catching some rack if anyone needs me,” he says, and barely manages to scramble up the ladder as Galen reaches out for his daughter (years and years older than when he last saw her now.)

“Jyn, my  _ stardust,” (Cas!) _

_ “Papa,” (Dad!) _

He makes it to the ‘fresher and locks himself inside, the reality of everything he’s done crashing around him in waves of nausea and anxiety, and Cassian gets no sleep all the way back to Yavin IV.

 

Mon Mothma wants to give him a medal, and Draven wants to strip him of his rank, and in the end Cassian hears back neither about the medal or demotion (he imagines Draven can’t dock it unless he wants to own up to his orders, and Draven can’t, isn’t supposed to, have more authority than any other member of the council) but he  _ does  _ hear of Jyn and her papa, mostly from Bodhi (nursing his own grief with a spanner and every engine in the hanger) and a little from the others. Baze is okay to work next to but Chirrut wants him to  _ feel _ and  _ Cassian is busy. _

No one goes to Scarif, and Cassian is deployed elsewhere when a rough-spun farm-boy is picked up from nowhere and flies the plans and Stardust (the Death Star) takes its namesake literally.

(Cassian can’t stop. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when the war is over. But this was one time the right choice felt like the right choice and Cassian will take that victory all the way to his grave.)

(Memories of Jyn keep him moving when everything wants to weigh him down and  _ strangle _ him.)


	3. Side B

Krennic’s uniform is white. White like snow, white like innocence, white until it isn’t, as Cassian (not Cassian) pulls the trigger on his rifle and the too-familiar feeling of the right choice crawls in his chest and dies, to rot and fester like poison in his veins.

Galen Erso falls to the ground before the bombardment starts and it’s every engineer, finally. Draven’s orders are satisfied. It’s the only thing Cassian can think about, now, except that the message  _ (Jyn) _ is down there, because if he thinks about anything else he’ll be good for nothing. There are better places and better times to be  _ Cassian. _

When Cassian makes it down to the landing, he hauls Jyn away from the body  _ (her father) _ and ignores her cries (heartbroken, heartsick,  _ what does the universe care for one more orphan _ indeed, and the rightness hooks barbs in his chest and  _ pulls) _ and at least she’s too good to struggle against him much, getting her footing after several feet so she can walk herself, so she can  _ run _ on her own.

They make it to the stolen ship (“Yavin IV, make sure they know we’re coming in a stolen ship,” and  _ thank the stars _ Kay used to be Imperial, that Bodhi used to be Imperial,) panting, drenched by the rain, and Cassian has  _ just enough time _ to slat his rifle into the gun rack before Jyn is suddenly  _ there. _

He dimly notes his cheek is stinging. Jyn’s eyes are hard as kyber and just as hot.

“You  _ bastard,” _ Jyn hisses. She looks like she wants to hit him again. If she swings, he’ll let her. (He deserves it.) Her chest heaves with effort and she can’t get in enough oxygen, angry as she is. He wishes she would calm down and breathe.  _ “You shot my father!” _

(Captain Andor can hide behind his orders, can hide behind Draven, but  _ Cassian _ won’t, he can’t. The right choice always hurts  _ so much, _ and he deserves  _ everything  _ she does to him.)

“I did,” he agrees into the dead silence. Chirrut doesn’t stare but the others do, and somehow the silence is both judging and condemning, like a court-martial. 

Jyn says nothing, just shakes with rage.

Cassian (not Cassian, he can’t be Cassian and do the things he does, there are better times and places to  _ be  _ Cassian) breathes. “This is war. It doesn’t stop for you, Jyn.”

When she slaps him again, tears gathering in her eyes, Cassian takes it, and the  _ right choice _ poisons him with every breath he takes.

 

On Yavin IV, Mon Mothma gives Jyn a half-hour longer to grieve, but it’s almost purely because Cassian has to give his report to the senator, Draven standing behind her shoulder. Everything he tells them is true: they barely made it out of Jedha alive, the message is gone, Galen Erso is dead. Jyn is the only version of the intel they have.

When he’s done, they dismiss him, and Cassian goes to the hanger where the venomous vipers of the Rebellion dwell, the ones who drink the poison down so the pilots don’t have to do it, so the vanguard know where they’re going, the ones who clean up loose ends and gather intel, ferry it out at the risk of their own lives--

The ones who’ll die before they betray the Rebellion, and die gladly, breaking everything they are (could have been) for the hope fragile as glass that the Rebellion has given them.

Cassian goes there.

“You look like shit, Andor,” Sokurav calls to him the moment he enters (ten years his senior) and Cassian arrows his direction, half because of the canteen in the man’s hand and half because Sokurav is one of the few he can call  _ friend. _

Everyone in here is a friend, everyone in here is a brother Cassian would kill and who would kill Cassian, wear the grief for what it was but bury it beneath the duty Draven needed them for, and this is what he needs, right now. (He needs to stop.)

He reaches for the flask and Sokurav gives it up without protest, “It’s Trandoshan ale.”

_ “Good.” _ It burns, going down. Cassian takes three hard swallows and then forces Sokurav to take it back before he drinks the entire canteen. He wants to feel better, and he needs to not be drunk. “Are there ever any choices that  _ feel _ good?”

“I’ll let you know if I ever have any. How’s it going out there?”

_ (Papa! Papa, wake up! Papa!) _

Cassian grimaces. Vomiting now would be a waste of good (terrible) alcohol. “They’re not going to do anything. You should have seen Mon Mothma’s face when I reported there was a one chance and we didn’t have it.”

“It’s true, then?” Tullio asks, leaning over the back of the couch (young, barely fifteen; older than Cassian had been but still too young, too young,  _ what does the universe care? _ ) “The Empire destroyed Jedha City?”

He reaches up to run shaky hands through his hair. “Yeah. And they’re not going to do anything about it.”

Draven would. Draven would send one of them.

Cassian doesn’t know how one of them could destroy something that  _ big. _

“What do we do?”

“What  _ can _ we do? There’s not even forty of us. We’d need the whole Alliance backing us.”

Someone snorted. “The  _ Alliance _ couldn’t beat itself out of a wet paper sack. We all know they won’t do what has to be done.”

The statement settles on all of them like a noose. What happens, when the Alliance will not give leave to do what needs to be done? Who does it then?

_ They do. _

“Jyn--” Cassian starts, hesitates. (In his mind he sees himself looking down at Galen Erso’s body, eyes opened wide in start. Maybe Jyn had called for him after all.) “She.. she has a plan.” She had to have a plan. Cassian was  _ all out of plans. _ “But she can’t do it alone. Will.. I’ll go, if she’ll have me.”

(In here is the time and place to be  _ Cassian.) _

“Well blast, kid,” Sokurav huffed at him, cuffing him on the shoulder. “All you had to do was  _ ask.” _

(Cassian hasn’t asked anything. Everyone in here lives and breathes for the Alliance, for the hope of something better, some future where they don’t have to fight. If Mon Mothma won’t do it, they’ll do it themselves.)

 

Mon Mothma says no. By that point, it doesn’t matter.

 

Jyn is still angry at him when they get to Scarif (he deserves it) but not so much that it affects their performance. Cassian can  _ be _ an Imperial Officer-- he’s done it before, he  _ is _ an Imperial Officer (not Cassian, he can’t  _ be _ Cassian when he does the things he has to do) and no one bats an eyelash at a trooper as long as they walk the walk and don’t talk.

Kay goes with them. He’s commented twice during the ride about the tension, noted how high the probability of Jyn shooting Cassian with her blaster has gone, but otherwise he has apparently noted the poison in Cassian’s veins and wisely chosen not to provoke Jyn any further.

(Kay knows, at this point, how badly Cassian takes his orders. He doesn’t understand how much it hurts, but he knows how Cassian reacts. Perhaps this is why Kay disregards orders so often.)

 

Krennic dies and Jyn throws the switch (and everyone is dead, they have to be, Bodhi is dark and Baze won’t or can’t respond and he  _ heard _ Kay die) but there is nowhere else to go but head back down and they go together, broken ribs grinding together and Cassian will die here, on this world, as his brothers and sisters died doing what the Alliance wouldn’t do.

They all knew it was suicide, coming down here. No hope of rescue, no other recourse. No one had come who hadn’t wanted to come. 

Had he really had a choice? (What other choice was there?)

Everything else is out of his hands. Everything except this, Cassian decides, and takes a breath as he and Jyn sink into their knees on pale beaches. (It is not the sun that rises in the distance.)

(“I’m sorry,” he says, because he is, because the right choice is  _ always _ carrion and rot and he will never be rid of it but he hadn’t  _ meant _ to do this to Jyn,  _ not Jyn, _ bright and fierce and everything he wished he could be. She says nothing to him, but she squeezes his shoulder a little tighter, and he thinks maybe she understands.)

The ocean is still. The calm before the storm. It’s so close now. He doesn’t want to die before he admits this--

“Jyn, I--”

(Hope is planting a garden you never get to see. Here is where they laid the first seed, on the beaches of Scarif. They watered it in blood and it took root and bloomed, but by then it was too late.)

(In the future, there will be children. A girl, bright and fierce with a heart of kyber, an orphan just as they. A boy, a soldier with a set of wings, sure of himself and certain, a soldier to the core who knows how to be strong because he knew how to hurt, a lifetime ago. And another, scared to the bone but determined to do the right thing because it was the  _ right thing to do. _ But these children are in the future, and by then does not matter.)

 

(The Force is in everything, and they are One with the Force as it envelops them.

Months from now They will reach out with a girl-queen to her son. These are Galen’s plans and he knows them, he built them for this purpose. This ship is Bodhi’s ship,  _ he is the pilot, _ and he can fly anything. And this is Chirrut’s shot, and Baze’s, the one with impossible odds.

This is Cassian’s shard of hope and Jyn’s rebellion and This is the Will of the Force.)

 

But for now, Cassian can  _ stop. _

_ (Jyn,) _

_ Thank you. _

_ (I love you.) _


End file.
